


The Best Ones Are Yellow

by Lilliburlero



Category: Return to Night - Mary Renault
Genre: Animal Death, Canon Het Relationship, F/M, Ferrets, Ficlet, Myxomatosis, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-25
Updated: 2014-03-25
Packaged: 2018-01-17 01:02:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1368160
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lilliburlero/pseuds/Lilliburlero
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.  Set in 1953.  </p><p>Written to Naraht's prompt: 'Hilary & Julian, innocence.'</p><p>Contains references to animal disease, suffering and death.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Best Ones Are Yellow

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Naraht](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Naraht/gifts).



Julian had drawn a straight-backed chair up to the cabinet and was fiddling with the dials. Hilary watched him a moment through the french window, took a deep breath, and entered. He drew himself up slowly, put his right hand on the top rung of the kitchen chair, and wheeled around slowly to greet her. It was strange how one could see the outline of his unbridled youthful movements beneath thirteen years of pain and infirmity, just as his fine cranio-facial structure was just perceptible beneath scarred, repeatedly-grafted skin.

‘Hello, dearest. My insensitive paws can’t get to grips with this contraption at all. Why did we buy it, again?’

‘I can’t imagine. I think you thought they would broadcast plays.’

‘Yes—the Coronation was theatre in its way, of, course—but so dreadfully static. There should have been naturals cavorting about, and salvage men—oh, love, you’re upset, what’s wrong?’

Hilary rested her head against his shoulder. He stroked her hair clumsily.

‘I—saw one. Still alive. I had to—I wish I’d a stick. I found a stone and did it with that. Closer than I'd like to have got.’

‘Beloved, what are you talking about?’

She looked up at his glossy, livid, wrecked face. ‘Rabbits.’

‘Oh hell. How horrid. I knew it would happen eventually, I suppose. I didn’t think it would make it up here so quickly.’ He let his hands fall. ‘Might a brandy be in order?’

‘It’s the worst possible thing for shock. Yes please. Don’t you think I’m ridiculous? After everything we’ve been through, I’m thrown by a twitching coney with a few pus-filled lesions round its eyes?’

‘Not in the slightest. Can ferrets catch it?’

'No, I don't think so. Exclusively leporids, I think.'

'Then we must have ferrets. Yellow ferrets. All the best ferrets are yellow.'

'Oh, my darling boy.' Hilary set about explaining why that couldn't possibly be a good idea.


End file.
